are you fucking kidding me? i am pissed off at oprah’s wealth all the time! the fact that she is so fucking filthy rich by flapping her yap and foisting dr. phil off on us really, really burns my britches…

also, too…i think most of the fucking rich are undeserving…pro-athletes, entertainers, your various banker/wall street types…i don’t think anyone ‘deserves’ to make multi millions…except maybe the ones who come up with cures for cancer, aids, alzheimers, parkinsons…etc…i think you see where i’m going with that…if you’re occupation of station in life does not greatly benefit mankind, fuck ya…you don’t deserve it…

Exactly. They make a desert and call it peas.
SRSly, if the WaPo proofreaders can’t distinguish between ‘deserts’ and ‘desserts’ then there is a problem.
——————————————
Richardson:

In Sweden and Denmark, the richest 10 percent have incomes about five times greater than those of the poorest 10 percent. In the United States, the ratio is 14-1. The OECD average is 9-1. Mexico has the highest, 27-1

It’s almost as if there an inverse relationship between inequality and national standard of living!

If the unthinking masses are willing to blow their leisure income to watch athletes & entertainers, it’s OK by me if they get the money, rather than team & studio owners. (‘Though it doesn’t always end up where it should, of course.) Not so much financial parasites.

People who develop cures for stuff, while deserving, would get it from over-charging for the cures. “Dr. Science needs a new yacht, that’s why you can’t afford to be cured.” Not that most of those people get into research for greed, most just want to stop suffering, but don’t give them any ideas.

It’s almost as if there an inverse relationship between inequality and national standard of living!

A couple of weeks ago on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart located the U.S. on a list of countries ranked by income inequality. We were at some absurdly low number, just ahead of Rwanda or some other horribly dysfunctional place that should never be mentioned in the same breath.

What’s happening now is that more rich are being disparaged as “undeserving.” Blamed for the financial crisis, Wall Street types top the list. During the 1990s stock market boom, about half of Americans agreed that “people on Wall Street are as honest and moral as other people,” reports the Harris Poll. This year, only 26 percent think so. Two-thirds believe Wall Street’s most successful people are overpaid.

Just because people found out that those wall streeters were conniving, thieving fucks selling snake oil is no reason they should change their opinion!

What’s happening now is that more rich are being disparaged as “undeserving.” Blamed for the financial crisis, Wall Street types top the list. During the 1990s stock market boom, about half of Americans agreed that “people on Wall Street are as honest and moral as other people,” reports the Harris Poll. This year, only 26 percent think so. Two-thirds believe Wall Street’s most successful people are overpaid.

It would be interesting to take a poll asking the same thing of conservative voters, only substituting “liberal,” or “Democratic voting,” or just “the people you vote to hurt” for “people on Wall Street.” I suspect the number would be well beyond two thirds… Then, we too could engage in spectacular displays of butthurt.

“Inequality has increased everywhere over the past two decades, even in countries where it isn’t a specific policy goal. There’s no single explanation to explain why, in an era of galloping globalism, we see the same thing happening all over the world, even in widely disparate societies.”

It’s totally surprising that the people with all the income pay almost all the taxes, isn’t it?

It’s also surprising that when they’re at their lowest in modern history and the federal budget is a giant pool of red ink, that the billionaires would recruit an army of stooges to spread lies in order to keep it all. I’m SHOCKED, I TELL YOU.

Fixxored: Before they began starving to death and started putting Aristos to the guillotine, French peasants thought of the rich in the same way they thought of the poor: some are derserving and some are undeserving.

Now, does that make Bobby more comfortable as he gazes out from his back porch?

Compare side: I got a job, the rest y’all go fuck yourselves. I don’t give a shit if you starve. It’s your own fault you’re out of work. I really despise people like this. Any one of them could be on the other blog tomorrow.

…Or you get sick. How is someone supposed to pay their insurance premium the year they’re stuck in a hospital with some debilitating health crisis?

That part of the whole capitalist-health-scheme I never understood.

Or the part about how I’m supposed to be able to choose the diagnostic tests I need instead of my doctor doing so. Like, didn’t the doctor go to many years of medical school to learn this stuff? How is the man on the street supposed to make these decisions?

Same goes for buying mortgages as buying health care – you have to depend upon your agent to tell you their expertise.

And do they have a single example of a business hiring more people because their taxes got reduced? Why would the business do that? Hiring people is unprofitable. It’s not like they’re going to take less profit just because they’re paying less taxes.

BRODY: Are you ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions that are coming from the media and others on foreign policy? Like, who’s the president of Uzbekistan?…

CAIN: I’m ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions and they’re already starting to come. And when they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you know?

…and then you (America, humanity) decided it wasn’t worth the trouble to ever go back. Or to set your sights on the next great goal: Mars. Or colonize space , or dream of someday reaching the stars. You just…gave up. You decided it was more important to concentrate on building private wealth here on Earth. You decided to gear up for a series of vicious little wars over the dwindling resources here at home.

I was 5 years old when Armstrong reached the moon. I don’t remember anything else about being 5, but by God I remember that. I grew up watching Star Trek, the Jetsons, Lost in Space, anything remotely space-travel related. I devoured Heinlein, Silverberg, Bradbury, Pohl. I expected to live in a world where travel to space was going to be routine, commonplace. I fully expected to be able to visit other worlds. I got gypped.

I’m ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions and they’re already starting to come. And when they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you know?

I’m ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions and they’re already starting to come. And when they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you know?

There’s a sneaking suspicion over at Fred “Slacktivist” Clark’s blog at patheos that the video is a Poe’s-Law spoof in the vein of Landover Baptist and objective.jesussaves.us. For what, if anything, that’s worth.

Steerpike, I was 7, and I remember being sent home from school to watch the event on telly. I also remember being vaguely disappointed – I mean, hadn’t they already travelled all over the universe? What were all those TV shows and books about, anyway? They couldn’t have been un-truthing, could they?

A’course now I look back and get all teary that I actually saw that historic moment – we look at the skies far too little, and spend too much time shuffling through life as though to get it over and done with.

And those bastards who frittered the wealth of a very wealthy nation just to snatch resources from the poor, they deserve an eternity in hell having a red hot poker up the jaxy. And that’s just for starters.

Even then there was a guy in my 7th grade class that knew it was a hoax filmed in some secret facility out west. Didn’t take a week for that to percolate through out the Birchers and other crazies even without any system of toobz.

Idiot. We 1%ers aren’t hiring because Obummer is freaking us out. He is a full on socialist who is taking us down the path to Greece. So we are waiting him out and hoping the Bummer doesn’t totally destroy the country. You know nothing poser.

Something tells me that a “1%” wouldn’t be spending his time posting comments on a WaPo article. I also don’t believe that a “1%” would deign to type out “Obummer”.

I was 5 years old when Armstrong reached the moon. I don’t remember anything else about being 5, but by God I remember that. I grew up watching
Shoot. Posted this on the wrong thread and then unfairly cursed WP because of it.

Star Trek, the Jetsons, Lost in Space, anything remotely space-travel related. I devoured Heinlein, Silverberg, Bradbury, Pohl. I expected to live in a world where travel to space was going to be routine, commonplace. I fully expected to be able to visit other worlds. I got gypped.

I was nine during the moon-walk and wanted to be an astronaut. In the sixth grade I learned that America was the breadbasket of the world and that one day there would be no hunger, no war, and a cure for cancer.

I was in my late twenties before I realized that much of my disappointment in the world lay in how wholeheartedly I believed this in the sixth grade.

I know there is a lot of tittering back and forth about the effectiveness of Occupy Wall Street, but the desperation going on in our bought and paid media to either hide it from sight or attack it like a scared child really says that it’s doing a lot of things right.

I went to a wedding this last weekend and during the dead time we watched some network news for the first time in a while and the fluff pieces were fluffier and more bottom-of-the-barrel as they tried to fill the 24 hours with never mentioning the Occupy Wall Street thing once. Over the whole thing was a desperate obvious tinge that seems to be coming through more with the less politically connected.

There is a real sense that the smokescreen is disintegrating and that’s freaking the powerful off to no end.

Whether this will end in lasting change or even a temporary improvement for the better is uncertain, but this method definitely has the 1% freaked out, about as much as the election of Obama had them scrambling to loot all they could in the racist backlash.

There definitely seems to be a Civil Rights Act style turning point in all of this if we keep pushing (complete with inevitable attempts to make all the improvements meaningless).

Members of the Boston Police Department moved in to dismantle and destroy tents after protesters ignored multiple warnings to move from the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a strip of parks and public spaces where they have been camped out for more than a week, the Boston Globe reports. Members of the media were told to leave and not to film. Patrol wagons were lined up on one side.

uhhhhh…a big part of greece’s problem is that EVERYbody is fudging on every single tax they are supposed to pay…the treasury got bankrupted because NObody, from the gazillionaires to joe schmopolis were not paying in enough to keep the services they still demanded from the government…the government played along until ‘uh-oh, the usa is in the shitter!’

so yeah, in a sense we already WERE like greece…the big boys weren’t paying in but joe schmo was…

uhhhhh…a big part of greece’s problem is that EVERYbody is fudging on every single tax they are supposed to pay…the treasury got bankrupted because NObody, from the gazillionaires to joe schmopolis were not paying in enough to keep the services they still demanded from the government…the government played along until ‘uh-oh, the usa is in the shitter!’

Kind of like when they’re complaining that “Obama’s turning America into a third world country!” You mean a country with no social safety nets and a few wealthy families at the top running everything while the rest starve? Yeah, that sounds like where America’s headed, alright, but it’s been headed there since 1980 at least.

Kind of like when they’re complaining that “Obama’s turning America into a third world country!” You mean a country with no social safety nets and a few wealthy families at the top running everything while the rest starve? Yeah, that sounds like where America’s headed, alright, but it’s been headed there since 1980 at least.

their dissonance has gotten so blatant that i really wonder how they can function…

alfred keeps telling me that he ‘respects my decision’…wtf…i just wanted to chane the amount of my automatic payment…guess what? can’t do it over the phone…alfred is going to send me a letter which i have to fill out and then mail back…then it will be 4 weeks before my payment amount will change…jesus h. christ! i do not respect that decision at all!

Are these the same “1%ers” whose taxes are currently the lowest since the Hoover administration…you know, when there was that hiring boom?

The same ones who have enjoyed ten years of those low, low taxes, yet managed to create only one million new jobs in the first eight years under Bush? The same Bush who essentially abandoned any regulatory oversight?

The same ones who, kicking and screaming, have created two million new private sector (note the distrinction) jobs under Obama?

I hereby decree that Robert Samuelson henceforth be known as Robert “my sole credential for writing about economics is having the same last name as a famous economist — we’re not even related — and that credential is somehow good enough to have provided me with a very lucrative career” Samuelson.

I know the “19% thinks it’s in the top 1%” has been debunked, but there are SOME people who believe they’re 1%ers who aren’t and never will be, and that’s the group I think this dude is speaking for. Frankly, if he’s ever hired anyone besides a neighbor kid to mow his lawn or shovel his walk I’d be shocked.

I love the reason the cops gave: expensive new landscaping! Jesus H, the Massachusetts constitution guarantees the right of assembly of citizens just like the US one does, and in neither is the health of local shrubbery listed as a limiting condition the full exercise of the right.

All the problems of non-rich people can be fixed by metaphors and pithy phrases about the success and helpfulness of the very rich.

Any suggestions that it’s not necessarily beneficial nor wise to turn a nation’s policies to favor the Point-Oh-Ones (the richest 0.01% of income getters whose starting income is about $5.5 million) means that people are angrily rejecting the deep, profound, complex wisdom of phrases like “I ain’t never done worked for no poor man!”

I’ve certainly worked for people who made less than $50,000. I guess I ain’t never worked for anyone whose income was, say, $3,200, but obviously I fail to grasp that I’m supposed to hear that pithy wisdom and shut up and hate socialism.

90% of small business owners net less than $80,000 a year from their businesses, usually their only source of income.

Do the math. Most Americans have worked for a small business owner at some point in their lives. Most Americans have worked for someone who barely made more than they did at that job.

I’m a small business owner. I do NOT make more than $50,000.00 per year. If I did make $300,000.00 per year, I don’t think I would give half a shit if my tax rate went up 4%. But then I also don’t eat poop or go around sniffing bike seats.

Jesus H, the Massachusetts constitution guarantees the right of assembly of citizens just like the US one does, and in neither is the health of local shrubbery listed as a limiting condition the full exercise of the right.

If I did make $300,000.00 per year, I don’t think I would give half a shit if my tax rate went up 4%.

My fundiegelical wingnut sister whined at me after I posted Elizabeth Warren’s quote about paying your share on Facebook. She is the wife of a dentist with a very successful practice (they’re putting two kids through dental school simultaneously) and she griped about paying “40% more…do we use 40% more of the roads?” etc.

My response was along the lines of “Leaving your innumeracy aside,” there are a bunch of systemic issues between the rich and poor that need to be addressed. I finished with “…but seeing how the proposed 4% hike in your income over $250,000 will put you in the poorhouse, I’ll be more respectful and quiet in the future.”

If I did make $300,000.00 per year, I don’t think I would give half a shit if my tax rate went up 4%.

You also wouldn’t necessarily hire anyone because businesses don’t hire based on how much the owners get paid, they hire based on whether the business needs the work done badly enough and whether the BUSINESS can afford it.

She is the wife of a dentist with a very successful practice (they’re putting two kids through dental school simultaneously) and she griped about paying “40% more…do we use 40% more of the roads?” etc.

Wow, his business DEPENDS on there being roads, decent water, and a fairly high level of civilization and stability(because teeth are not your first priority when the shit hits the fan), so yeah, 4% more seems pretty fucking minimal for the benefits they receive.

Sometimes I wish the arguments of politicians and pundits were, as a matter of course, subjected to the same level of scrutiny as those of a high school debate team. And also that those arguments would not be aired on television or printed in newspapers or on line without their grade. So we could listen to a presidential speech and and know that it was a B- for accuracy, but that the rebuttal from some wingnut congressman was an D- for accuracy, needless partisan venom and willful misunderstanding of the issues.

Pinellas County Florida has voted to end the fluoridation of water because local Tea Party politicians and activists are finally tired of these one-world-government Soviet plans to make Americans stupid.

In case you missed it, the Pinellas County Commission voted last week to stop putting fluoride into the public drinking water supply — you know, the stuff that helps prevent tooth decay.

The vote was 4-3, with one commissioner voting to cease fluoridation because, according to the St. Petersburg Times, it was “a social sort of program.”

Tea party activists stirred the pot, with the Times quoting one as saying, “Fluoride is a toxic substance. This is all part of an agenda that’s being pushed forth by the so-called globalists in our government … to keep the people stupid so they don’t realize what’s going on.”

He and the four commissioners must have been drinking a lot of fluoridated water.

One of three commissioners who voted to keep putting fluoride into the water supply is going to try to have the decision overturned in a meeting today, the Times reported. Stay tuned.

You also wouldn’t necessarily hire anyone because businesses don’t hire based on how much the owners get paid, they hire based on whether the business needs the work done badly enough and whether the BUSINESS can afford it.

Which, of course, means if the owner has a bigger tax bill, he’s going to be more aggressive getting jobs to help pay it, which means more work which means…

“Fluoride is a toxic substance. This is all part of an agenda that’s being pushed forth by the so-called globalists in our government … to keep the people stupid so they don’t realize what’s going on.”

Sometimes I wish the arguments of politicians and pundits were, as a matter of course, subjected to the same level of scrutiny as mature and well thought out as those of a high school aged persondebate team.

Which, of course, means if the owner has a bigger tax bill, he’s going to be more aggressive getting jobs to help pay it, which means more work which means…

There’s a reasonable argument that increasing income taxes should lead to more hiring, rather than less. If you own a small business, and I’m taxing your last dollar at 30% or so, you might as well call the business’s last dollar of revenue “yours”. On the other hand, if you own a small business and I’m taxing your last dollar at 90%, there’s not much point pocketing that last dime.

On the other hand, if you hire somebody with it, it turns into an expense, and all it costs you is a dime, whereas in the first case, the new guy cost you 70 cents. The difference in incentive can be significant.

General Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard-core Commie works.

Back to the top: Are you really telling me that a specialist in economics who regularly comments on business missed the major technological change in the industry he covers (that would be, the management of large enterprises) for about three decades?

Sadly, yes.

Scribble, scribble, scribble, eh? (I know, that was about Gibbon, to whom RS Jr is as some Mesozoic proto-primate)

There’s a reasonable argument that increasing income taxes should lead to more hiring, rather than less.

Then there’s the plain facts as well, that there is absolutely fuck all evidence of any correlation between top marginal rate and the rate of GDP growth or unemployment. Neither in this country nor any other.

The wingnuts have been mining this seam for years, and have never failed come up with the most easily falsifiable quasi-academic clap-trap in the history of humankind. Including the Laffer Curve. Which probably splains why it is one of the most repeated wingnut talking points.

The 1% are the 51% who say they don’t want obama re-elected, apparently.

Well, they are the 51% of accumulated wealth, and, y’know, one dollar = one vote.

but that the rebuttal from some wingnut congressman

Someone remind me. When, exactly, did it become standard procedure for some assbucket to “rebut” every speech made by our duly elected President? Maybe I’m just getting foggier as time goes on, but I really don’t remember Reagan having Tip O’Neill come on after each address and say “Bullshit!” Seriously, when did it start? Was it a Fox thing?

‘My response was along the lines of “Leaving your innumeracy aside,” there are a bunch of systemic issues between the rich and poor that need to be addressed. I finished with “…but seeing how the proposed 4% hike in your income over $250,000 will put you in the poorhouse, I’ll be more respectful and quiet in the future.”’

If I am not mistaken, the 4% actually applies to $500,000 on a joint tax return. It applies to $250,000 for a single taxpayer.

Freeedumb!http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/10/11/a-victory-for-cavities/
“Water fluoridation is not much different than sending a fluoride Gestapo around every day to force everyone to take fluoride pills, it is unethical and doctors who advocate this are in violation of peoples rights and ethics,” David Jackson wrote.

Any suggestions that it’s not necessarily beneficial nor wise to turn a nation’s policies to favor the Point-Oh-Ones (the richest 0.01% of income getters whose starting income is about $5.5 million) means that people are angrily rejecting the deep, profound, complex wisdom of phrases like “I ain’t never done worked for no poor man!”

I’ve certainly worked for people who made less than $50,000. I guess I ain’t never worked for anyone whose income was, say, $3,200, but obviously I fail to grasp that I’m supposed to hear that pithy wisdom and shut up and hate socialism.

Well…yeah.

I mean, we live in a capitalist system. Of course, we aren’t working for poor men, because those poor men not being as poor as us when we work for is the demonstration of the hours of labor they have stolen and underpaid for in order to make themselves rich men. Yes, I imagine there wasn’t a slave in the Antebellum South that worked for a poor man either and I don’t think that would have been used as an argument for how hard the Plantation owner worked.

And this only becomes more blatant when what “makes the 1% richer” these days isn’t even a 1:1 relationship of theft, but is rather the actions of them trying to find new more oblique methods of theft of short-cutting the economy to get richer. The stock market, the various shell games with people’s pensions and health care, various scams on the government, and so on.

And it is feudalism at its purest, because, well, the serfs worked for great big rich men and could compare among their number who worked for the richest man. If they were lucky to break into the servant class, they could keep track of the minutiae of whose owner was richer than whose for their bubble-headed “earned by birthright” owners.

And I love the complete abandonment of any argument that it’s possible for these people to have “earned’ these large salaries through hard work.

Oh, it’s still insinuated, but now only because it is treated like a hostage situation. Either we let them control our democracy and do whatever they want or they will never hire someone again. Which severely counts on people not realizing that “have the government seize all their shit” is totally a valid option if they’re refusing to do the “job” they argue is the only thing keeping the economy going.

No wonder they’ve been doubling down on getting the 27%ers and moderates lizard-brain-reacting to “government bad, government can do nothing” for 30 years. Because that’s the only thing that would make this claimed hostage situation anything other than an instant invitation for retribution (I mean, I’ve been unemployed for a year and a half, these people are claiming they are personally responsible for this, how would most people do the math?)

Speaking about teh top marginal tax rate – remember that the argument is based on teh Going Galt maxim. That once a certain level of taxation above a threshold amount is exceeded proposed by a Democratic president, then teh überproducers will withhold their precious bodily fluids*. Which means that productivity only drops if no one else is willing or able to pick up the “slack”. So even allowing for teh existence of petulant and petty Randian super-men that reduce their productivity in teh face of an increased marginal tax rate – society is only out that amount of productivity if it’s already at full employment.

*Something we already know to be false. Workaholics work because they are addicted to it. That’s why it’s an “-holism”. IOW, they are addicted to being ‘holes.

Amazing because this argument was so transparently bullshit and so transparently inapplicable to American systems. I mean, we’ve all noticed that the “curve” is pure speculation and not based in anything real, but that it is wholly inapplicable.

I mean, let’s look at what it argues at the “end” the 100% taxes would destroy everything.

Well, yeah, if you taxed 100% of all income, then that would indeed have the effect of receiving no income because there would be nothing to pay.

So solution 1 already in place: Progressive taxation.

Boom, done, now “100%” taxes would now just be a mark of maximum income per year. You couldn’t earn more than say “1,000,000 a year” or whatever. So now, all the money you would earn over that must go into ensuring you have that income in future years which means long term planning that emphasizes stability of companies and their ability to keep up with times with aggressive r&d, all good things for the general economy. Apply that also to our “corporate persons” (isn’t it interesting that laws to individuals never seem to apply to these corporate “persons”, such as treating profit as income to this person and so on) and now the incentive to create megacorporations and rule by monopoly also decreases. It’s better to grow to maximum, split off legitimately or dissolve for new up and coming businesses and huge incentive to invest in start-ups because they have the greatest chance for growth and remaining “shelf life” and bigger corporations will no longer see the need to maximize profits because there’s a hard limit, again leading into focusing on long-term stability at the maximum rate and investing in workers in order to form the best products to stay on top. Again, all good things.

So now, the mythical “100%” would only apply to income over a certain level, everything under would be less touched. Okay, now the rich person in question from our previous example doesn’t even need to worry about how much they give themselves in income or earned wealth. No worries about a single penny dooming all their legal income. Now they can go a little over and still make the maximum. The same incentives are in place more for long-term investment. Again, naught but good things. Tighten up the punishments for fleeing to a tax shelter in another country and boom, you’ve got a system for training the ultra-rich into being good citizens who work for their common man.

Ah, that’s the real rub isn’t it. And why we have to disregard everything we know about how the tax system works to argue for the Laffer Curve. Because these people really don’t want to be forced to be good citizens in the loosest possible way just to enjoy great wealth. They instead want the return of the right to own people and governments and the great personal power that brings not to mention the way it makes their aging and tiny penises slightly flex up like an old man trying to do one more push-up.

Speaking as someone who would never have to worry about a theoretical maximum income, ever, but does have to worry about issues like “will we be able to eat next month” and “how long can we hold on before we can’t pay rent”, I find it hard to muster up the sympathies these whiny little titty babies demand.

And now I do want a 100% marginal tax rate. Even better, make where that kicks in be a simple multiplication of the minimum or medium wage per year in this country. Watch us develop a sudden interest in taking care of the poor on that day.

“Inequality has increased everywhere over the past two decades, even in countries where it isn’t a specific policy goal. There’s no single explanation to explain why, in an era of galloping globalism, we see the same thing happening all over the world, even in widely disparate societies.”

Well, yeah, if you taxed 100% of all income, then that would indeed have the effect of receiving no income because there would be nothing to pay.

The fallacy, of course, is what happens at the other end. It is illogical to assume that because 100% of your earnings are taxed, therefore you wouldn’t create more tax revenue, that zero percent tax rates would maximize tax revenue.

Because, you know, it can’t.

So assuming the Laffer curve is a bell curve, which I believe it was described as being, the sweet spot is somewhere near 35-55% and definitely between 20% and 80%.

Going Galt maxim. That once a certain level of taxation above a threshold amount is exceeded proposed by a Democratic president, then teh überproducers will withhold their precious bodily fluids*. Which means that productivity only drops if no one else is willing or able to pick up the “slack”.

Exactly. Hands up those who would work as hard as one of the “John Galt’s” for that income.

Yeah, pretty close to 100% with a few snickerings here and there about how “hard” they work compared to the lower classes…or fuck, the goddamned unemployed. I know I’ve spent my days working longer hours sending out apps, researching new job skills, trying to gain microemployment and so on than any of these lazy ass 10-3 CEOs.

Ironically, enough, they might be the most replaceable of all the rungs in a corporate ladder. All the rest have skill sets that might not be worth the potential income learning to join and in a decent economy might have more demand than surplus for those talents.

Whereas in any economy, there is a long line of people who would jump at the chance to learn a few bits of bullshit to earn that kind of dosh or run companies. And I imagine their replacements would accept “indignities” like higher marginal tax rates on incomes they never imagined seeing in their lives.

These people are like a non-suicidal attention seeker on top of a large building really hoping the answer back from the street isn’t “jump!”

“Inequality has increased everywhere over the past two decades, even in countries where it isn’t a specific policy goal. There’s no single explanation to explain why, in an era of galloping globalism, we see the same thing happening all over the world, even in widely disparate societies.”

This growing inequality is not confined to the global South but is rampant in economically powerful nations. Most striking is the growing level of inequality in the USA, a country with the highest GNP and primary exponents of the ‘Washington Consensus’. Economic inequality has continued to increase in the USA since the late 1970s. This inequality can be seen in numerous aspects of socio-economic life, such as growing income disparities, loss of opportunities – especially for women and minorities, inequality of health, education and crucially, political participation. One in eight people in the USA live in poverty and for a ‘developed’ country it has an unusually low life expectancy level. These factors highlight the extremely skewed benefits of the free market model, even within national borders.

Given the overwhelming evidence of the inability of the political economy to reduce inequality and deal with non economic aspects of prosperity, why are free market policies so ardently perpetuated by economically powerful nations? The answer is, unsurprisingly, profitability.

According to the International Forum on Globalization, 52 of the top 100 wealthiest economic entities are corporations as opposed to countries.

True, but again, that assumes a flat tax rate. If everyone was being taxed equally at income. But because we have a progressive tax rate and a marginal tax rate, there wouldn’t even be a “bell curve” in the theoretical space, but something akin to a more or less straight line possibly ending at 100% with a plateau. So at worst a logarithmic curve and that’s before we add all that nasty little reality into the equation.

So yeah, if we assume that taxes don’t work like they do, but rather how they would like them to, a completely closed system free from the real world, and that their “I just farted this up as a thought experiment” horseshit was actually applicable to anything, then…

You’d be right, they’d still be wrong because of the way they ignore the other end or even the whole “bell curve” aspect of it in their “fear” of an entirely theoretical “100% tax on everything” sort of situation.

With that level of inaccuracy at every level, no wonder it’s become a right-wing shibboleth.

See, I always assumed it meant average tax rates across America incomes, so in effect, it was de facto flattened. After all, Reagan talked about tax cuts for everyone initially (I wonder how he’d feel about this current wave of elitism?), not just the rich, and justified it with the curve

Though, hell, maybe the former. I’m sure there’d be a slightly shorter line for the chance to become hero and God of an extremely hierarchal society by essentially quitting your job, whining to a bunch of other primadonnas they should quit their jobs, and having other people turn you into a meme while you sit on your ass.

Also, ignored in the book, the fact that “Galt’s Gulch” is collectivism. Ooh, the evils of collectivism, we’ll solve that by forming a commune of like minds who all work for each other’s benefits, taking shared roles in the basic upkeep needed for human lives and giving each other our inventions instead of the “greedy outside collectivist world”.

Yes, forming a commune to protest communism. Ingenious I tell you!

Ah, objectivism, a philosophy that it’s own polemic can’t even correctly imagine working even when it creates the “perfect conditions”.

Any suggestions that it’s not necessarily beneficial nor wise to turn a nation’s policies to favor the Point-Oh-Ones (the richest 0.01% of income getters whose starting income is about $5.5 million) means that people are angrily rejecting the deep, profound, complex wisdom of phrases like “I ain’t never done worked for no poor man!”

And I ain’t never done worked for no millionaire; everyone I’ve ever worked for has been solidly middle class. My understanding, reinforced above, is that most people work for small businesses and most small business owners are middle class, so apparently most people also don’t work for no millionaires.

Surely I can’t be the only person here born after the Apollo 11 landing, can I?

I did say t minus, not t plus, right? I forget stuff now that I’m so old.

See, I always assumed it meant average tax rates across America incomes, so in effect, it was de facto flattened. After all, Reagan talked about tax cuts for everyone initially (I wonder how he’d feel about this current wave of elitism?), not just the rich, and justified it with the curve

Again, not how taxes work. And by that logic how exactly are we to reach “100%” average taxes. We’d basically be arguing a system where not only were we collecting income tax on all taxable incomes, but instituting 100% taxes on those we consider to be making less than a living wage because…?

Not to mention that this cannot be in a system of marginal and progressive taxation. The system simply doesn’t work that way and in fact, cannot even be parsed in any system which operates on an assumption of flat taxes or even “averaged taxes to flatten them”, because the point of progressive taxation is the levels of taxation at different levels of income. The growth to 100% simply couldn’t work in any way similar as to how it would work under a flat tax.

Which is probably why the real wealthy have been trying to pimp a flat regressive tax for a very long time. Because at that point it will be even easier to argue for lowering their taxes because we’re “lowering everyone’s taxes” and even harder to raise them than it is now and it’s currently close to impossible.

Even if you bought the Laffer curve (which, as many have pointed out, you shouldn’t) all it says is that there is an optimum tax rate.

The Republicans talk about it as though it shows that cutting taxes always raises revenue, so you maximize your tax revenue at infinity dollars when the tax rate is 0%, but even Laffer fundamentalists who only have Dick Cheney’s used cocktail napkin should understand that there are times when increasing the tax rate should lead to increased government revenue.

Of course, they are more honest these days. They just think taxing the rich is wrong. Full stop. They’ve gone from Laffer to Rand. I’m not sure if that’s a step forward or backward. Is the transition from “stupid” to “evil” good or bad, though I’m inclined to say “good”. It’s much easier to get public support for “this tax cut will create jobs and make our economy prosper as the rising tide lifts all boats” than for “this poor, struggling millionaire can barely afford to put gas in his plane. Won’t you help a brother out?”

Well, yeah, it’s impossible at every level. It’s just one of those things where even if you granted them the perfect setup, doesn’t work, kinda like objectivism.

Also, yeah, it’s a dark joke that one would “work as hard” as the whiny fucks who complain about marginal tax rates, considering that I imagine that nearly everyone in any bracket that could be described as “poor” have worked harder in a day than those lazy morons have in a week, maybe even in a month.

Yeah, “would you work less hours, in comfier conditions, and with less stress than most low-income jobs, in exchange for several million dollars a year, or even a month, even if you faced a hard cap on income over 5,000,000 dollars a year?” is not one that would be having many people shying away from because “taxes are too punative”.

And frankly, we all know that if we taxed 100% of all income over 100K a year, they would still choose those jobs over working retail or “living off the government in unemployment checks” and all of the other myths they spew.

Not just in teh US, but anywhere. Ever. Teh Laffer Curve is a thing of faith and faith alone. The post WWII boom coincided with that crazy 90% top marginal rate. Everyone accepts the “100% tax rate would yield no revenue” statement as fact. This is begging teh question. Also this refers to a 100% effective tax rate. Again, teh idea that even if there did exist a “Laffer Curve” for high revenue earners only – and there doesn’t despite decades of searching – the point is irrelevant unless the economy also has full employment.

As is aptly demonstrated from the paid shills whining about how positive views of the ultra-rich have plummeted by 25% or more to the Crazification Factor (27%) and little more.

Gosh, who would have guessed that tanking the economy and then hijacking any attempt to fix it with constant whines about maybe potentially having to pay slightly more in taxes or have to earn the money more honestly next time, while blocking any relief to anyone other than banks and corporations and directly sabotaging attempts to get meaningful healthcare reform at least would cause even slow people to put two and two together and go “wait, you’re not my friend anymore, are you?”

I wonder if the French aristocracy in the time before the Revolution were even half as begging for it as our modern aristocracy is?

And frankly, we all know that if we taxed 100% of all income over 100K a year, they would still choose those jobs over working retail or “living off the government in unemployment checks” and all of the other myths they spew.

Thank you. Here’s the point – producers gotta produce. They’re like haters in that way. Frankly, if the top marginal tax rate above say, a million dollars were 200% to a ceiling of your gross income – jerkwad hedge fund managers would still be maximizing their percentage even if they keep none of it. Because they don’t know anything else.

And I’m thinking the best thing for this country would be a mandatory class on the marginal tax system and how it works followed by a short test with well known talking points on it. Anyone who fails the test will receive one year of having their taxes calculated under a flat rate rather than the marginal rate along with a detailed note labeling the difference followed by a mandatory repeat of the class the following year.

Any politician who nonetheless pretended this system wasn’t in place to make a political point would be stripped of office and forced into an intensive form of the class that would likely involve people with real problems screaming at them the difference until they got it.

Indeed. And that is why they would be producing like motherfuckers. Itemized deductions are a fantastic way of reducing your taxable income.

But that wasn’t my point. We’re talking about people who insist on carrying on their 90 hour work weeks, never taking vacation and have bleeding ulcers from stress – and when the ER staff tell them to cut back or they might not survive the second heart attack, they check their Blackberries for High Importance messages.

These people would work even if all their efforts yielded only widespread hatred and contempt for their very existence. As is currently being demonstrated across the country.

Exactly. Why is “going Galt” bad? So Dr. Don’t Tax Me, the struggling neurosurgeon, is going to refuse to work 80 hours a week, and only work 40 from now on, if we raise the tax rate on his last $100,000? Doesn’t that mean that Dr. Currently Unemployed Neurosurgeon can be hired to work the other 40?

It only makes sense if you assume (as Rand did, and wingnuts do) that there is a finite amount of competence, and once we use it up, it’s Thunderdome. I believe that not to be the case.

Does he consider himself a producer? Church deacon, Macon government idiot, blogger, spokes-shill on CNN… what useful service does he provide? And even though I deny the useful of their bullshit metric, pretending for a second it’s a useful indicator of something what evidence does he have that the 53% are more likely to agree with his useless lying ass than they are with the protestors?

Well, yeah, workaholics (who let’s be frank, are almost never in the 1%, though they sometimes might make it to the 10% with luck) will work no matter what. It’s the only thing that keeps one distracted from one’s own self and the horror of one’s own thoughts or plugged into the casino-like routine of finishing-project-euphorias and the like.

And more to the point, the workers have been keeping a bad system running long after it should have fallen apart, simply because people want to try and navigate the system as best they can to do right by end-users the best they can and do a good job with their jobs.

By incentives, the system should have collapsed the instant they started the “screw the workers” initiatives and abandoned products as the means to make money. But because people will keep trying to do the best they can, despite working underpaid and understaffed, the system keeps barely ticking over as there are still products that might be worth a damn out there against the direct orders of their corporate overlords and corporate policies.

And it’s what makes their “we are the economy” or their “we are the only citizens who matter” horseshit so hard to swallow.

Because we still have something in spite of them not because of them and now they want the right to take it all hostage until we give them an even deeper blowjob.

There is a point when the slave has been degraded to the point that stabbing the master in the belly looks like a really really good idea.

I’m well aware of teh difference between marginal and effective tax rates. And effective marginal tax rates. In fact, this third concept – the marginal increase in effective tax rates for increases in income – is illuminating on teh Laffer Curve nonsense.

For a wide range of low to medium income levels, the effective marginal rate increase is massive. Due to the structures of tax credits and social safety net programs. And yet, people in that group still try and work their way up teh ladder. Because that’s what you do. It’s not only teh average middle-class worker that stops and thinks – OMG this overtime is going to increase teh phase-out of some tax credit – it’s EVERYONE. Because no one thinks like that. Because the fundamental premise behind the Laffer Curve might sound reasonable and rational, but it’s also one of those things that goes against all available evidence and our existing understanding of human nature.

It only makes sense if you assume (as Rand did, and wingnuts do) that there is a finite amount of competence, and once we use it up, it’s Thunderdome.

Which is probably why they spend so much time rationalizing every single unemployed person and poor person as an unmotivated, incompetent moron who could work if they wanted to and wasn’t so goddamned lazy.

Because to do otherwise would be to admit that there is a surplus of supply and thus they are quite easily replaced by any number of hungry unemployed people who would jump at the chance to do their job.

And they spin these stories to make the middle class paranoid about the poor, not the upper class.

German economic policies practically enshrine the Mittelstand sector, the small / medium or family-owned businesses. Big corporations are seen as nice to have but they’re not what keeps people employed or keeps the economy ticking over.

The “I work harder than you” meme has become a reflexive defense against knowledge that an upbringing, inheritance, superior early education, nutrition, values and even dumb luck favor a small group of people. The assholes who are favored by these things KNOW it, but feel compelled to look down their noses at the less fortunate.

Big corporations are seen as nice to have but they’re not what keeps people employed or keeps the economy ticking over.

Yup. Another interesting fact about that G country:

The German co-determination law (Mitbestimmungsgesetz) forms part of the bedrock of German industrial and company policy. it requires that just under half of companies’ supervisory boards’ members are representatives of workers. German company law is curious to an English speaker’s eye, because it has not one but two boards of directors. Shareholders and trade unions elect members of a supervisory board (Aufsichtsrat). The chairman of the supervisory board, with a casting vote, is always a shareholder representative under German law. The supervisory board is meant to set the company’s general agenda. The supervisory board then elects a management board (Vorstand), which is actually charged with the day to day running of the company. The management board is required to have one worker representative (Arbeitsdirektor).

“Water fluoridation is not much different than sending a fluoride Gestapo around every day to force everyone to take fluoride pills, it is unethical and doctors who advocate this are in violation of peoples rights and ethics,”

I was looking up Cynthia Janak from RenewMerka (as an example of Crank Magnetism Bingo). She simultaneously manages to hate the ACLU (because fighting for civil liberties is SOSHALISM) and worry about the sochalists putting fluoride in the water because it VIOLATES HER CIVIL LIBERTIES.*
I don’t think she’s alone in her tolerance of cognitive dissonance.

And yeah, the thing is about income is that outside a hard limit, your end-of-the-day income is nearly always* higher the more income you make.

It might be a little more or it might be a lot more, depending on tax rates or loss of deductions, but the end message is nearly always the same. More money in the bank. And most people will choose that heartily and may even take a relative hit for the opportunity to make more in the future or move up a “social class”.

The only people who whine about marginal tax rates “robbing their income” are idiots who forgot to factor it in when they heard how much they’d be making and so assumed all of it would be theirs or rich assholes who have nothing better to do with their time than sit and stew about the few pennies that got away.

And yeah, it’s hard to sympathize with either of those groups of people when I spend my days fantasizing about making 20,000 a year, or hell, even 10,000.

*There are a few exceptions where the loss of benefits is more than would be gained in income but these are a) rare, and b) rarer the richer you get, poor people have to wonder if that job that barely pays minimum wage is worth it because of the loss of food stamps, rich people rarely have to worry about whether the loss of a deduction erases the extra digit in their yearly income.

Yeah. It doesn’t even make sense from their own warped view of reality. The effective marginal tax rate is way higher on low/middle income earners than it is on the rich. That’s how it’s currently set-up.

But in crazy right-wing land, teh poor are lazy and teh rich are super-producers. And being lazy is a moral failing. And paying moar money to teh gubmint discourages work. So, by not reducing teh tax buredn on teh poor only – we are promoting laziness. That teh virtuous thing to do, from a utilitarian perspective, is to massively shift teh tax burden off teh poor and middle class and put it on teh rich – because that incentivizes moral behaviour.

And I know I’ve used this anecdote before, but the farmer I stayed in Denmark with for a bit told me that they didn’t really have rich or poor in Denmark while he owned his own farm and fairly good sized estate with a fairly large place for renting, a summer home in Germany, and a horse ranch in Switzerland for their daughter to train to become an equestrian athlete.

So yeah, that high marginal tax rate seems to allow one hell of a nice lifestyle for all of that “oppression”.

Also, going over the article, I like how he points out some carefully underestimated facts that still show the glaring inequality problem and then just instantly segways into concern trolling critiques.

Okay, yes, the rich own all our stuff, but…um, they pay their taxes and aren’t all evil? And besides, can’t we just make income inequality into a “opinions differ left/right thing” so we can just whine about “partisanship” rather than engaging the topic, like we do about abortion?

The shills don’t even really have the energy for a genuine pushback anymore, rather just a flailing, “eek, don’t look at the man behind the curtain” reaction to having the protestors gather underneath them.

“I know they exist – I see them every day,” a conference participant, Robin Lynn, said by telephone from Kemerovo. She says she has a family of 10 yeti-like creatures living on her land in the US state of Michigan.

Oh, well then, search is over. Poor yeti-like creatures, homeless squatters on the land of others…curse you Bank of America!

they didn’t really have rich or poor in Denmark while he owned his own farm and fairly good sized estate with a fairly large place for renting, a summer home in Germany, and a horse ranch in Switzerland for their daughter to train to become an equestrian athlete.

It’s almost as if providing the entire population with opportunities to contribute to the economy works better for a country than drawing all one’s executives and decision-makers from an inbred, inherited-wealth-based elite!

the richest 10 percent of Americans accounted for about 33 percent to 35 percent of total income, including capital gains (mostly stock profits), estimate economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty. By 2007, their share was 50 percent

It’s almost as if providing the entire population with opportunities to contribute to the economy works better for a country than drawing all one’s executives and decision-makers from an inbred, inherited-wealth-based elite!

Who could have known?

It’s almost like feudalism is even more a proven failure than communism or something.

I fucking HATE those 53%er FUCKING ASSHOLES. Those are the kind of people who suggest you should feel lucky to have your shit job with no benefits and shitty pay and an sawed-off little runt with a Napolean complex for a boss, cuz HEY AT LEAST YOU’RE WORKING.

Those people are WORSE than the 1%ers because these fucks suffer to enable them.

The coralary to the laffer curve is that a tax rate of 0% should raise infinity revenue.

I’m ashamed to know this, but actually no. That’s why it’s a “curve”. It starts at 0 revenue for a 0 tax rate, increases to some magic optimum point (around 70% if you’re a consenus economist, about 7% if you’re a glibertarian) and drops to 0 revenue for a 100% tax rate.

But there’s no evidence for it. And with teh complicating factors of oscillating business cycles &c. it’s hard to analyze. BUT still – this is how the Laffer Curve came into being – it’s obvious that a 0% tax rate raises 0 dollars and it is also “obvious” that a 100% tax rate raises 0 dollars. Therefore there’s a point somewhere in between that yields maximum government revenue. IOW, pure thought exercise based on 0 empirical evidence and actually in contradiction to obseved reality. Welcome to teh world of Economics.

Ben Franklin was a commie who rammed big government libraries and fire departments down America’s throat.
Don’t forget the Post Office! And the regular census!

It’s almost as if providing the entire population with opportunities to contribute to the economy works better for a country than drawing all one’s executives and decision-makers from an inbred, inherited-wealth-based eliteand telling people who lucky they are to live in a meritocracy.

The first PG movie I ever saw in a theater was Capricorn 1 about a fake Moon landing starring O.J. Simpson

If you notice in the dark corner of the studio where they faked it lies a bloody glove.

Everytime I think about OJ, and it’s not often, I’m reminded that one of his last commercial endorsements was for Hertz Rent-A-Cars which included a commercial with a Cali surfer dude a la Kato Kalein saying “Brutal, Juice”

Also, hey, what about those countries that do treat terror as a criminal problem rather than a problem that can be solved by indiscriminately bombing everything in the loosely-reasoned “area”?

Well, let’s see here, there is Denmark, which is pretty much number one on the terrorist hit list because a right-wing douchebag there made derogatory drawings of Mohammed once. They treat their terror threats as police issues similar to other criminal threats. As of yet they have foiled every attempt to committ a terrorist act on Danish soil and that number dwarfs the number of “attempts” that America has had even if we include our “never would have had a chance” and “feds actually were the ones to plan it the whole time” events.

Not only that but they successfully managed to prevent a planned attack on the Danish national team in South Africa for the World Cup.

So yeah, Danish police working with local law enforcement as a police action managed to prevent an attack against their citizens at a chaotic event in another fucking country simply because they treated it like a law enforcement problem.

Meanwhile, we got tangled up in two meaningless wars, made ourselves one of the most hated nations on Earth, managed to fail to prevent any number of domestic terrorist attack because “it wasn’t external muslims doing it” and we were only able to capture Osama when we stopped trying to bomb the problem into submission and actually did some rudimentary police work to find him in his not all that hidden pleasure palace.

But do go on, war criminal John Yoo, explain to us why terrorism is different from crime and should only be approached from a military perspective.

Oh wait, you don’t have any argument other than “terrorism isn’t crime” and a few appeals to the lizard brains of conservatives.

I guess it’s our own damn fault. Every war criminal who spends the next few decades being a douchebag is a stark reminder why we should resist the urge to “let bygones be bygones” and actually fucking arrest and try these fuckers for their crimes against humanity.

The “I work harder than you” meme has become a reflexive defense against knowledge that an upbringing, inheritance, superior early education, nutrition, values and even dumb luck favor a small group of people.

They also define “work” into something they do that other people don’t; you know they don’t work harder than, say, migrant farm workers, and yet they know they do because they know they do. It also ties in to the zero-sum competence idea, in that they know they are the competent ones and any black man or woman hired over them is not, and therefore evidence of affirmative action, reverse racism, the downtroddenness of the white man, etc. You or I might call this begging the question, but we’d be wrong because we’re wrong.

You or I might call this begging the question, but we’d be wrong because we’re wrong.

Yes. I once sat most of the way through a football game with a fucking douchebag who commented that the ball being shaped like a watermelon had a dramatic effect on the NFL. He and I didn’t get along well after I had about 4 beers.

It’s because “hard-working” is a tribal identity, or more like a tribal reward. Just like you become “good”, “moral”, “upstanding” and “upholding family values” by belonging to the right tribe regardless of your actions (it’s okay to rape your six-year-old daughter as long as you go to the right church and argue against homosexuality and abortion in public).

So, by going to the right church and being the right color, you are obviously an inheritor of the “protestant work ethic” and “work hard” actual effort notwithstanding and because others aren’t part of this tribe they are inherently “not hard working” and “lazy”.

It has no bearing to any actual actions. They will call a migrant worker lazy to their face while they are lounging on their porches picking their navels.

It’s because the migrant isn’t part of the “hard-working” tribe.

Or to put it more simply. All words have become dog-whistles to describe other people’s belonging to an out-group. Thus every atheist, black, latino, woman, etc… are lazy, greedy, moral-less, criminal, degenerate parasites. Because they aren’t white male christian protestants of “good standing”.

Chaos, confusion, an entire crew of unqualified, untrained and poorly equipped (axes are likely to be considered weapons, even in red states), criminals running into burning homes. The only sad part is that we didn’t think of it before.

Those are the kind of people who suggest you should feel lucky to have your shit job with no benefits and shitty pay and an sawed-off little runt with a Napolean complex for a boss, cuz HEY AT LEAST YOU’RE WORKING.

Makes me think of Stevie Wonder’s “Village Ghetto Land.”

Also too the whole convo makes me think of “Misstra Know It All” and frankly the luckier and less productive of anything actually useful or meaningful people are, the bigger their head about their awesome independent and unprecedented bootstrappiness. Venture capitalists == soul goatses.

Every can of food donated, every food stamp printed, every welfare payment offered, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger for caviar and cannot get enough, those whose walk-in closets are full of last year’s clothes.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the social-responsible complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

Ever since the Civil War our national leaders and the Supreme Court have agreed that a citizen who joins the enemy must suffer the consequences of his belligerency, with the same status as that of an alien enemy.

ahhh, yes! the civil war…such enlightened times they were!

and really? yoo is going with killing terrorist=bad, torturing terrorist=good?

okay…lady on the radio is bitching because she works in the medical field, has to pay a *super* high premium w/a *super* high deductible all the while watching single welfare moms and their multiple kids coming in 24/7 for mri-s and other expensive tests for FREE…or maybe a $3 copay…she finished by saying that ‘oh my gawd, these people need to get off their lazy asses and get a job!’

i was like, wow, shouldn’t you be a little more pissed off at your insurance provider and wanting to fix the ‘system’ and not bitching about the slobs clogging up the waiting area? who are also keeping you employed?

okay…lady on the radio is bitching because she works in the medical field, has to pay a *super* high premium w/a *super* high deductible all the while watching single welfare moms and their multiple kids coming in 24/7 for mri-s and other expensive tests for FREE…or maybe a $3 copay…she finished by saying that ‘oh my gawd, these people need to get off their lazy asses and get a job!’

I’m convinced that every situation is exactly how she perceives it. They’re all single welfare moms, all of them have tons of kids because they get more welfare that way.

According to the reports, the Obama administration believed that force could only be used against Awlaki because arrest was impractical and he posed an imminent threat to the United States. This is plainly wrong.

It may make for good policy, especially toward US citizens who make the mistake of joining the enemy, but there is no legal reason why a nation at war must try to apprehend an enemy instead of shooting at him first.

In other words, even providing lip service to rule of law is too dangerous in time of war against a strategy and we must just kill ’em all and let the Big Judge In Teh Sky sort ’em out.

Don’t be fooled by the clichés of protest movements past. The most radical people today are the ones that look the most boring. It’s not about declaring war on some nefarious elite. It’s about changing behavior from top to bottom. Let’s occupy ourselves.

Unfortunately, the country has been wasting this winter of recuperation. Nothing of consequence has been achieved over the past two years. Instead, there have been a series of trivial sideshows. It’s as if people can’t keep their minds focused on the big things. They get diverted by scuffles that are small, contentious and symbolic.

Meanwhile, the Wasilla Wonder goes overseas to South Korea and criticizes the Chinese military and calls for regime change in North Korea. The South Korean goverment had to walk it back.

Dimwit is going to cause an international diplomatic crisis.

WTF? Since when is talking stupid SHIT considered statesmanship? Of course, motherfuckers are STILL hating on Jane Fonda, but this will draw a massive chorus of “WHAT”s from the wingnuts. She is such a fucking jerk.

My first TV memory was the opening to The Six Million Dollar Man, (Aside from the cartoons and Sesame Street). My brother and I LOVED that opening sequence.

mine was sneaking downstairs to mom and dad’s room to hop in bed with them to watch ‘dragnet’…they always wheeled the tv into their room and had snacks…this also is besides captain kangaroo and romper room…

My first TV memory was the opening to The Six Million Dollar Man, (Aside from the cartoons and Sesame Street). My brother and I LOVED that opening sequence.

[Oscar]We can rebuild him![/Oscar]

I loved that show as a kid too. I’m sure I watched TV before Saigon, but I don’t remember any of it. I have a clear memory of that though, even at that age I could tell there was something going on that my folks thought was a big deal.

Another memory of mine — being sure I turned off the TV before I left to walk to school, so I could turn it back on and watch it from the same spot when I got home. I was pissed when that didn’t work. My dad thought that was hilarious, but I was really just inventing the DVR before its time.

A year or two before The Six Million Dollar Man premiered, in an effort to help me with my scifi obsession, my father got me Cyborg by Martin Caiden, which was the first book I read with explicit sex. The tv show was a disappointment.

In a number of nations in South America, their leftish and leftist governments have actually reversed their own trends and began reducing inequality.

Brazil, since electing that crazy ultra-leftist Lula da Silva, has massively cut poverty, and with the “Bolsa Familia” directly gave money to women in dire poverty and allowed the ending of starvation among the greedy poor who kept wanting to ‘eat’ and ‘live’ and stuff.

Nearly 40 million Brazilians left poverty level incomes for middle class incomes, though attempts to contact George W. Bush Jr. to explain how many’s in a million Brazilian is unclear.

This was also after decades of US-created military tyranny (launched under JFK) which imprisoned future President and labor leader da Silva himself, and after decades of US economic ‘advice’ telling them to cut off anything related to national and popular development to sell of forests & shit. Instead,

Long famous for its unequal distribution of wealth, Brazil has shrunk its income gap by more than any other country in South America this decade, with the bottom earners showing major income gains and more modest gains among top earners. But Brazil is also outspending most of its neighbors on social programs, and overall public spending continues to be nearly four times as high as what Mexico spends as a percentage of its gross national product.

Oh, but, you know, inequality is just some sort of unavoidable natural process, sometimes it goes up, sometimes it goes down, kids say the darndest things.

ha, ha…that is pretty funny…i remember tuning in to general hospital and being all, ‘wtf? this is the same thing they showed yesterday! and the day before!’ yes, my romance with soaps was short-lived…but what wasn’t at age 5?

The Space Launch System, or SLS, will be designed to carry the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, as well as important cargo, equipment and science experiments to Earth’s orbit and destinations beyond. Additionally, the SLS will serve as a back up for commercial and international partner transportation services to the International Space Station…

…The SLS rocket will incorporate technological investments from the Space Shuttle Program and the Constellation Program in order to take advantage of proven hardware and cutting-edge tooling and manufacturing technology that will significantly reduce development and operations costs.

It will use a liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propulsion system, which will include the RS-25D/E from the Space Shuttle Program for the core stage and the J-2X engine for the upper stage. SLS will also use solid rocket boosters for the initial development flights, while follow-on boosters will be competed based on performance requirements and affordability considerations.

The SLS will have an initial lift capacity of 70 metric tons. That’s more than 154,000 pounds, or 77 tons, roughly the weight of 40 sport utility vehicles. The lift capacity will be evolvable to 130 metric tons — more than 286,000 pounds, or 143 tons — enough to lift 75 SUVs. The first developmental flight, or mission, is targeted for the end of 2017.

If the ‘They’s Wuz Some Things, Hell, I Mean A Buncha Shit Man Wuz Jus’ Not Meant To Know And Such’ Republican Senate doesn’t kill it, this is pretty bad ass.

However, if NASA would indeed commit to shooting 75 SUV’s into space, or perhaps a mix of SUV’s, full-sized pickups, and NASCAR stock cars, it could gain more support from the Grand Old Crumbling Holy Roman Empire Party.

The last five years, I have saved more than $10,000 on gasoline and insurance. I get 60MPG, average (bigger scooter than most — 250cc engine, which can do interstate travel). For someone who has been cyberbegging, this makes a huge difference in quality of life. Still have a mostly-ramen diet, though.
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Moon Day is my birthday!! Also too!!! AND, I like to drink beer! Coincidence??

It’s got to be a conspiracy!

Summer birthdaze are the BEST because you’re evenly spaced between your bday & Xmas. I had a friend whose bday was Dec. 27. Always felt kinda bad for him.

Yeah, they were great especially with the weather around here. I was always the tiniest bit jealous of my friends that got to have their parties at school (at least in grade school), but good weather and the whole “present spacing” thing balanced it out.

And hey, JP, good luck. It’s gruesome out there, make sure you assign the proper amount of responsibility to the world and the economy and not yourself. Having been out of work for awhile I remember beating myself up a fair bit about this.

I was six when I watched Apollo 11 touch down – it was on our old black-and-white Zenith with commentary from Walter. I was so into anything space and I still remember a book from grade school called You Will Go To The Moon. I got to tour the Kennedy Space Center when I was 11 – nerd heaven.

Hey, I made lasagna tonight, too. Arrabiata with the last of the tomatoes (sad face) cooked for much of the day, then home-made almond ricotta and pine nut parmesan. Going a little veganish for the spoose’s cholesterol. The almond ricotta was excellent, the parm only so so, but with a little work might be presentable.

My s.o. was born the day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. We’re nine years apart, I know what I was doing the day he was born. If I had had a clue, at the time, I wouldn’t have known what do with it. Probably would have wondered if he was as cute as that boy on the Rifleman, or Robin, or the Green Hornet, or Michael Nesmith, or John Lennon, or Danny, or Kevin… and wondered if he liked to wrestle.

Hey, I made lasagna tonight, too. Arrabiata with the last of the tomatoes (sad face) cooked for much of the day, then home-made almond ricotta and pine nut parmesan. Going a little veganish for the spoose’s cholesterol. The almond ricotta was excellent, the parm only so so, but with a little work might be presentable.

i did not put that much effort into mine…but it was pretty good…the garlic ciabatta bread was the bomb! no dessert 🙁 tho…

These guys pass by my work at sunset. Yes it is like that.

we get a huge flock of blackbirds in the trees next to our house for about a week every fall….annoying as hell when they won’t shut up…terrifying as hell when they all take flight…

I took about a bazillion pictures of the Saturn V they had laid out horizontally at the KSC. The Ho was all “WTF? Why are you wasting film (which helps to date the experience) on this thing?. I was all but creaming my jeans over the experience.

From Executive Planet on business etiquette: “Professional women typically wear conservative business suits or dresses. Since many people sit on the floor in some restaurants, tight skirts are best avoided.”

Jeebus.She looks like she’s the keynote speaker for a porn convention.

I like the notion of Palin condemning too close a collaboration between government and big business in South Korea, home of the chaebols, in which none of their megacompanies succeeded without massive government intervention and exploitative trade agreements where — whether or not there would have been any shit they wanted to buy from us — they were free to sell here, but US imports were disallowed or massively tariff taxed. And until recently, capital repatriation got the death penalty.

I’m sure there were some polite giggles at how well she knew South Korean politics and economics.

my two younger brothers were born a year apart one on dec. 23 and the other on dec. 26

Are y’all Irish? ‘Cause some kinda event was going on in late March……………………..

I still shudder thinking of the haircuts.

I saw FoS open up for Squeeze…………………the singer had this big, weird bird-of-prey haircut and looked totally scary……………………then, between songs, he was all, “‘ey! ‘ow ya doin’ then? ‘sgreat ta be ‘ere…………….”

‘We must meet this crazy American! She is a crazy person! You will laugh much. Have you seen her reality TV show? And she pretends to be a moral leader in their country but her family is such a crazy group of weird people! I’m sure I can get her expenses paid.’

The stereotype of the small-businessperson as a start-up innovator is pervasive. But it’s not true, according to a new study. Scupper the image of Mark Zuckerberg handcrafting a new service to revolutionize how we socialize and adding thousands of jobs to the economy. Replace it with the image of a gas-station owner, servicing a crowded market, happy to be able to make his kid’s soccer games without a boss breathing down his neck, and more wary of innovation than eager for it.

Small-town Rotary Club-asshole type, in other words.

As I read in the Business Section of the L.A. Times, many yrs. ago: Most small businesses are cash cows for the owner & owner’s family, & most of them don’t survive the death of the owner.

Actually, ‘just deserts’ is correct. Though it is both intuitive and entertaining to imagine that the just desert-ee is being forced to eat some kind of metaphorical souffle of retribution or ice cream sundae of fail, the phrase in fact uses the archaic word ‘deserts’, meaning ‘things that one deserves’.

Digging through the piles of trivial shit blocking access to much of my memory, I now remember it was Mel Brooks who told Johnny Carson about it on the Tonight Show. A little incomplete knowledge is a dangerous thing

I’ve never tried K2’s, unless I rented them at some point and just can’t remember.

I rode straight-stick Hart 195s into the ground over twenty years. Those puppies were waxed and sharpened so often, I could have used them for Ginzu knives by the time I painted them and tacked them over my garage.

I have it on good authority (well, his authority) that tsam could get women to flash him just by promising to play Freebird. I don’t think he had any problems in the chick department, whatever his hairstyle.

I agree with you Actor, that the whole “Iranian military hiring Mexican thugs to assassinate Saudi Diplomats” thing smells a little hinky. I mean the Iranian military is one of the largest and best-funded in the Middle East; why would they subcontract to a bunch of narco-bandidos? The advantage of keeping their hands clean by having third-party stooges pull the trigger is more than offset by the potential blowback if the Zetas botched the job and ended up implicating Quds. Even if the plan had gone off without a hitch (and what could possibly go wrong?) the Iranians would have to know that the FBI and CIA would start digging around and would have a very good chance of uncovering the plot eventually. And for what? To eliminate a royal flunkie, who will just be replaced the very next day with another one who will say and do exactly the same things?

How hard is it to figure out if you paid federal income taxes? Doesn’t the 1040EZ have a box that says “Total Owing” or something like that? Why do they need to write these long letters. They could just highlight the “Total Owing” box and hold that up, to show their membership in the 53%.

I agree with you Actor, that the whole “Iranian military hiring Mexican thugs to assassinate Saudi Diplomats” thing smells a little hinky. I mean the Iranian military is one of the largest and best-funded in the Middle East; why would they subcontract to a bunch of narco-bandidos? The advantage of keeping their hands clean by having third-party stooges pull the trigger is more than offset by the potential blowback if the Zetas botched the job and ended up implicating Quds.

My initial reaction was skeptical too. What I find weird isn’t that the Iranians would hire criminals to do their work for them (using local surrogates is an old tradition in international relations, whether it’s a good idea or not – we asked the Mafia to help us whack Castro, didn’t we?) It’s the other side of the equation: what’s in it for the cartel? They’re a business, they don’t have ideological biases. Since America’s much more powerful than Iran and closer to Mexico, if they were going to pick a side in the Iran-U.S. struggle, why pick Iran? The benefits of helping Iran are lower and the risks of offending America higher, than if you did it the other way around.

Then again, maybe that’s exactly what happened: I’ve heard some speculation on the Net that this “DEA informant inside cartel” thing’s just a cover story and that the Mexicans sold out the Iranians.

Even if the plan had gone off without a hitch (and what could possibly go wrong?) the Iranians would have to know that the FBI and CIA would start digging around and would have a very good chance of uncovering the plot eventually. And for what? To eliminate a royal flunkie, who will just be replaced the very next day with another one who will say and do exactly the same things?

And that part I really don’t get either. What’s in it for Iran?

I don’t have any definitive opinion, just following the story with a very open mind. One thing: did you notice that in the FBI press release, it said that Arbabsiar was “recruited, funded, and directed by men he understood to be senior officials in Iran’s Qods Force.” Men he understood to be from the Qods Force? That’s a carefully chosen word. Definitely not by accident.

I wish I did. Teh 53% thing is so fucking sad. Most of teh stories there are from people who are obviously not part of teh 53%. OMG I PAY TAXES SO FUCK YOU LAZY UNEMPLOYED JERKWADDERS! – Only that by their very own stupid-ass way of assessing it, they don’t pay taxes.

Here’s a quickie assessment for potential 53% ers. If it’s true that 47% of people pay no taxes (where “taxes” means federal income tax only) then teh cut-off income for “paying taxes” should be very close to teh US median household income – with variations for your specific situation and deductions. In 2006, that value was $50,233. If you make less than that, odds are pretty good that you’re not the 53.

As for teh rest of teh jerkwad scumbag asswipe shitfuckers – Fuck You. All scrambling around with smug self-righteous assholery because you’re in that lucky group of folks sharing your thin slice of teh pie. Yeah, teh rich haven’t gotten around to fully looting your sad and sorry asses yet, but NEWSFLASH – the homeless are running out of blood for them to drink and if it means moar foreclosures to provide fresh homeless, then how safe are you?

Then again, maybe that’s exactly what happened: I’ve heard some speculation on the Net that this “DEA informant inside cartel” thing’s just a cover story and that the Mexicans sold out the Iranians.

That thought crossed my mind as well. It’s hinted that the informant was the go-to guy for the drug cartel. If the Yanks are supplying weapons to the cartels (for god knows why) then it stands to reason he’d have some motivation to inform the US.

On the whole Gavrilo Princip-lets-do-it-again-plot Saudisraeliranian taco bomber conspiracy, what I don’t find too hard to believe is that somewhere on the planet there happened to be some mental case who could have hatched this idea. (That somewhere turned out to be Texas, which presumably now deserves some collective punishment, amirite?)

The connection to someone high-up in Tehran? Srsly? Just seems like the Mohammed Atta in Prague, Nigerien uranium and Iraqi anthrax all over again.

i thought we already had this conversation and determined that you are NOT A FAILURE!!! if you are still beating yrslf up over this, i will drive to dc and find you wherever you and give you a beatdown…capiche?*

*i only added that part to make myself sound tuff…really, i’d only give you a good tonguelashing and then probably help you haul boxes or something…

There are 1%-ers that pay no federal income tax and a quarter of those making less than $25K do. It depends on your specifics. BUT, using a $50K threshold is a pretty quick and easy way to assess without digging out your tax return.

And much as I love Glenzilla, I think he’s stretching to call it a made-up plot.

Still, the possibility exists and I suspect if we hadn’t been lied to as freely by first the Bush administration and now the Obama administration (about closing Gitmo, for example) it would be easier to ignore the laughability of the whole thing.

I read Glenn Greenwald’s take on the incident and I agree with him. This seems like simply another example of the FBI finding an outspoken grumpy middle eastern guy and then doing everything in their power to radicalize him to the point where he can be called a danger to the US. there were any number of things this guy did wrong, and while it is not wrong to say he didn’t wish the US happiness and kittens, I think it is safe to say that without the FBI egging him on, he either wouldn’t have considered this plot, or would have failed messily at any one of dozens of the intermediate steps between revenge fantasy and horrible tragedy.

Maybe you’re right, or at least maybe it was someone in the IRG who was trying to make his bones unsanctioned:

There are also reasons to be skeptical of the seriousness of the threat, however. “I am putting this scary Iranian-Mexican plot into the ‘delusional moron’ category unless I see any evidence to the contrary,” Foreign Policy’s Blake Hounshell tweeted Tuesday. As in many other cases involving FBI informants, it was the informant, not the suspect, who was to provide the means to carry out this attack. “Many lives could have been lost in the plot to kill the ambassador with bombs in the US,” Mueller said during Tuesday’s press conference. But, as in many other cases involving the FBI’s use of informants, there was never an actual bomb.

Reza Aslan, an Iran expert who I worked for last year, doesn’t buy the idea that the Iranian government was involved with the plot at a high level. “The Iranian regime may support terror groups who pose a risk to US national security, but it has never attempted a terror plot inside US soil and there is really no reason to believe that it would do so,” he argues. Could Iran be trying to instigate a new conflict with the United States? Aslan says no: “Iran has no interest in initiating an open conflict with the US. Could there be rogue elements within the Revolutionary Guard working independently of the government on what is clearly an assassination for hire? Perhaps.” Overall, Aslan says, the idea of a far-reaching conspiracy “simply does not pass the smell test at this point.”

Firstly, that teh US has any problems with another country plotting targetted assassinations is pretty fucking rich.

Moar importantly, a list of things not being challenged:

– A DEA informer offered to blow the shit up of some Saudi d00d.
– Plot was accepted by some guy with as many connections to teh US as to Iran. A guy best characterized as “a bit of a loser.”
– Evidence connecting d00d to teh Iranian Quds force consists of “he called his cousin who’s totes an Iranian super-spy, or at least may have been at one time, or something.”
– Teh feds have a sterling record of principled behaviour now that anti-terror laws have rendered the notion of “entrapment” quaint and outdated. Especially when dealing with folks best characterized as “a bit of a loser.”

It is a made-up plot. Shenanigans of teh highest degree.

Although to be fair – I suppose this plot is moar credible than teh idea that one guy was going to take down teh Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch.

Also too, teh main “facts” we have about teh case come from teh unsealed criminal complaint. IOW, written by teh people prosecuting teh case.

Look, I’m not saying it is impossible for teh Iranians to have a totally and inept and ridiculously gullible intelligence force. Evidence thus far indicates that people who excel at that business and get promoted to senior levels are stupid idiots with zero self-awareness and less empathy than serial killers. But teh evidence that this is what it was is pretty fucking weak ass shit.

lie1 ? ?/la?/ Show Spelled [lahy] Show IPA noun, verb, lied, ly·ing.
noun
1. a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
2. something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture: His flashy car was a lie that deceived no one.3. an inaccurate or false statement.
4. the charge or accusation of lying: He flung the lie back at his accusers.